


It's All A Haze

by WhiteCeilings



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, BAMF Peter Parker, BAMF Pietro Maximoff, BAMF Wanda Maximoff, BAMFs, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friends to Lovers, Hazing, Hurt Pietro Maximoff, Kidnapping, M/M, Near Future, No Underage Sex, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Peter Parker is a Little Shit, Peter is 21, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Canon, Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, Protective Bucky Barnes, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn, Training, young avengers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:28:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23570839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteCeilings/pseuds/WhiteCeilings
Summary: After graduating college, Peter knows it's time to stop messing around and dedicate his life fully to being an Avenger. He's willing to do whatever it takes to prepare to eventually lead the Avengers, but to do that he's going to need a trainer, and who better to ask than the Winter Soldier?Bucky says yes, knowing that the kid won't last a week. Bucky's gonna haze theshitout of him.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Peter Parker, James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Peter Parker, past Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 85
Kudos: 253





	1. The Grad Party

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my wonderful beta shinynewpenny for all your help!

**Bucky**

Bucky wasn’t sure why he was there. 

He’d been invited, he assumed, as nothing more than a courtesy. All of the Avengers had shown up for Peter’s grad party, and the party room in the compound had been decked out for the event. There was confetti and streamers everywhere, and balloons bobbed around in the air conditioning, proclaiming things like “Party!”, “Congratulations!”, and “M.I.T.”. Bucky started at that one for a little too long. He hadn’t even known that’s where Peter had gone; he’d known, vaguely, that the kid was in college, but MIT? Even Bucky knew how prestigious that school was. 

The party started about ten minutes ago, when the graduate arrived to a round of cheering. Bucky ducked out of the way as people crowded over to him, taking turns hugging and congratulating him. Bucky knew most of the people; there was Wanda, one half of the Maximoff twins; Pepper and Morgan, the late Tony Stark’s wife and daughter; Clint Barton, who still had the mohawk,  _ Jesus _ ; and others. Romanoff was there with her girlfriend Maria Hill, and even Carol and Fury had shown up, though, like Bucky, they lounged near the back, not willing to fight the crowd to say hello. 

Bucky was vaguely aware of Sam sidling up to him, looking at the celebration with a twisted frown. “Wow. This is a lot of excitement for such an annoying kid.”

“They don’t know he’s annoying,” Bucky said, playing along. “Should we tell them?”

“Nah. Let him have his moment.”

Bucky smiled a little, but it dropped the longer he thought about the kid. He’d only met the guy once, at that airport in Germany. Peter’d been recruited by Tony to help capture Bucky, and out of all of the Avengers, he’d had the most success. Bucky wasn’t bitter about that part, though; the only reason that memory was stained red was because Steve had been there. Steve had thrown everything away for him, rebelled against God and the Accords to protect him. 

But now Steve was gone. He’d chosen Peggy, and cut their friendship short. It turned out, the line ended in 2023. 

It didn’t matter. It wasn’t the kid’s fault, the kid just reminded him of it, and it hurt. But it was fine. 

“I wonder if he and Tony ever got together,” Sam wondered aloud, bringing Bucky back out of his head. Bucky looked over at where Pepper was kissing Peter on one of his bright pink cheeks, the boy laughing in delight. “You know they were close.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, because he did. Sometimes, when they were staying in a motel with a tv in it, Steve would turn on the news station and Tony would be there, more often than not with his hand on one of Peter’s costumed shoulders.  _ These kids are our future,  _ he would say. He never brought Wanda or Pietro on the stage, only Peter. They stood closer than Bucky would expect between a mentor and his prodigy, and when Peter looked up at him it was clear that in Peter’s eyes, Tony hung all the stars in the sky. 

Bucky tried to do the math, figure out how old Peter had been back then. If he was graduating college with his master’s degree now, he was probably around 24? So back then, if you counted the fact that he’d been blipped, he must have been… “He was 18 back then?” That wasn’t so bad. It was still bad, but not  _ so  _ bad.

Sam shook his head. “He graduated with his Master’s in three years; he was 15 back then.”

Bucky winced. Okay, that was really, really bad. He was about to ask how Peter was able to graduate so quickly, when Peter yelled out “Pietro!”

“Peter!” Pietro yelled back, shoving through the crowd. He picked Peter up and spun him, the boy laughed in delight as he tried to keep a grip and not fall over. Pietro dropped him back on the ground, then proceeded to kiss all over Peter’s face, stopping with a final peck to his lips. “Peter, you asshole, I missed you!”

“I missed you too!” Peter defended, holding Pietro by the face to keep him from kissing him anymore. “We need to hang out more.”

“My schedule is empty, you’re the busy asshole!”

Peter winced. “I was getting my degree. I basically didn’t have a social life for three years.”

“I’ll second that.”

A curly-haired girl about their age came up behind Peter, and Peter gave Pietro one last quick kiss before turning to her, introducing her as MJ. 

Sam whistled lowly. “Well, even if he was with Tony, at least he moved on. And to someone his own age.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, still staring. “Did you know they were dating?”

“Man, I don’t know nothing about no one.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. That was untrue; Sam was the one Bucky always came to when he needed to catch up on gossip. It was a miracle the guy had ever followed patient-counselor confidentiality. 

People started to move around after that, giving the graduate some space as they mingled with other Avengers. In the newly renovated compound, all of the Avengers had apartments on site, though few lived there. Technically, Bucky had a joint one with Sam, but he only stayed there when Sam requested it. Otherwise, he preferred just to stay in his RV. 

Bucky would’ve been fine leaving the party then— he’d already dropped off his gift, what more could anyone expect— but Sam insisted he mingle. “You're an agoraphobe,” he accused. 

“You’re a psychologist,” Bucky complained, “You should have more respect for the labels you throw around.”

“My certification expired last year, so I can throw around whatever labels I want.”

“Hey guys,” Wanda greeted, walking over to them. Bucky liked Wanda a lot; she had the type of confidence where she wouldn’t let herself be walked over, but at the same time she was usually just a nice, genuine person. 

She was also a badass who could throw spaceships around with her mind, and it made Bucky’s competence kink really, really excited. 

“Hey Wanda,” Sam greeted. 

Bucky nodded. “We’re just talking about how Sam’s a dumb himbo for never going to college. Did you know he got his counseling certification online?”

Wanda raised an eyebrow playfully. “Really? Sam, you should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Hey, at least I got a certification! And it’s not like Bucky went to college.”

Bucky crossed his arms, faux-offended. “That’s not my fault. I got drafted straight out of high school.”

“I  _ enlisted  _ straight out of high school, and I still continued my education.”

Wanda tilted her hand in a  _ so-so  _ gesture. “In Bucky’s defense, he had extenuating circumstances.”

“Yeah Sam,” Bucky said indignantly, playing it up. “I couldn’t go to college because I spent seventy years getting fucked up the ass by Mother Russia, what’s your excuse?”

A few feet away, Scott Lang choked on his fruit punch. He waved his hand apologetically, and quickly made his way to the other side of the room. 

Sam sighed, shaking his head. “You’re right; there’s no excuse for my miseducation. Excuse me.”

Wanda and Bucky watched Sam make his way across the room, starting up a flirtatious conversation with Valkyrie, who was visiting from New Asgard.

“He knows she’s not straight?” Wanda questioned. 

Bucky sighed. “Yeah. He’s just a masochist, he liked getting rejected. It gets him off. That’s why we’re such good friends; everytime I tell him what a fuckup he is, he comes in his pants.”

Wanda looked at him out of the side of her eyes. “You two have the strangest friendship.”

“You’re not wrong.”

Bucky made the rounds after that, talking to a couple of the other Avenger’s he was cordial with. He even said hi to the kids, Tony’s kid Morgan, who was 9 now, and Clint’s kids Lila, Cooper, and Nate. Lila was in her teenage years, and based on her dark eye makeup seemed to be making the transition to goth. The effect was ruined by her still-brown hair, though. 

“I like your makeup,” Bucky complimented as he played catch with Nate. 

Lila was leaning against the couch, her phone out as she texted. “Thanks.”

“Are you going to dye your hair?” 

Lila looked up, narrowing her eyes at him. “Maybe,” she said, after giving him a through once over and apparently deciding he isn’t the enemy. “But my parents won’t let me. They say that I should ‘embrace my natural beauty’, whatever that means.”

“Oh, that’s bullshit,” Bucky said, purposefully throwing the ball too far so Nate wouldn’t be able to catch it. The ball bounced once, then hit Carol Danvers on the head. She looked at him and made a vaguely threatening gesture, and he responded with a hand-heart and mouthing the word  _ Sorry.  _

__ Lila was still looking at him, so he quickly replayed the conversation in his head. “Oh, right. Yeah, that’s bullshit, natural beauty is for losers. Why else do you think I chopped off my arm?”

Lila’s eyes widened as she took in his black and gold apparatus. “You cut off your own arm?”

“Oh yeah, years ago. I was trying to start a trend, but it never really took off. The worlds full of pussies, you know?” He winced, realizing that probably wasn’t appropriate language to use in front of a teenager. “Sorry. I mean it’s full of wimp-ass bitches.”

“You have an arm now, though,” she pointed out. 

Bucky nodded seriously. “Yeah, that’s because the Princess of Wakanda owed me a favor. I asked her to make me a leg I could attach to my shoulder joint instead, but she refused, so instead I ended up with this.”

“Are you feeding my daughter lies?” Clint asked, swinging his legs over the back of the couch to flop down next to Bucky. He landed with his head in Bucky’s lap, just hard enough for Bucky to feel like he got kicked in the crotch by a toddler. He winced, and tried to cover it up by stroking Clint’s face meaningfully. 

“Why did we never try to make things work?” He asked, staring deeply into Clint’s eyes. That was a direct quote from the last rom-com Bucky’d watched, and though he and Clint weren’t staring into each other’s eyes in the pouring rain, this still felt like an adequate moment to bring it up. 

Clint took ahold of his hand, making goo-goo eyes back. “Because, Bucky. You’re just… so ugly.”

Bucky used his specially designed vibranium arm to shove Clint off his lap, rolling him onto the floor with an  _ oomf.  _ “Hey, is that anyway to treat the love of your life?”

“If you were the love of my life, that’d be a pretty depressing life,” Bucky pointed out. “No offense, Laura.” 

* * *

All in all, Bucky considered the day pretty successful. He talked to some of his friends, he started a few rumors, and no new civil wars broke out, which was sometimes all he could ask for. He was just about ready to go back to his RV and take off, when the man of the hour climbed onto the couch across from him. 

Bucky tried to ignore him as Peter got comfortable, sitting cross legged on the couch beside MJ. Even though Peter was supposedly dating Pietro, MJ still got extra cuddly with him, resting her head on his shoulder and wrapping her arms around him. Peter kissed the top of her head, accepting her closeness as if it weren’t anything out of the ordinary. 

Bucky was just about to get up and give them their space when Peter looked up, smiling over at him genially. “Hey, Mr. Barnes, are you enjoying the party?”

“It’s just Bucky,” Bucky corrected automatically. “And yeah, sure.”

For some reason, that made Peter smile down at the ground, bashful. “Yeah, okay. Bucky. I’m, uh, Peter. Parker.”

Bucky stared at him. “I know who you are, this is your party. Oh, uh, congratulations, by the way. MIT. Wow.” 

Peter waved the compliment aside. “Nah, it’s no big deal. I probably only got in because of Tony.”

“Bullshit,” MJ said, half asleep on Peter’s shoulder. “You worked your ass off to get in. Barnes, you know he got a 35 on his ACT? That’s unheard of.”

Bucky didn’t know what the ACT was, but he hoped it wasn’t scored out of 100, because if so that’d be pretty pathetic. “Oh yeah, sure.”

“I could’ve done better,” Peter said self-deprecatingly, shaking his head. “I bombed the reading section.”

MJ rolled her eyes. “You got a 35, you didn’t bomb anything. Jesus, you’re the worst.”

“Anyway, congrats,” Bucky said, wanting to wrap the conversation up. “Still, graduating is pretty impressive. You have your bachelor’s now?”

He’d heard that Peter had his Master’s degree, but obviously that was wrong. The kid graduated in three years, which was fast even for a bachelor’s. 

But instead, he found Peter shaking his head. “No, I mean, yeah, technically, but I got my bachelor’s last year. This year I got my master’s, so I’m done for now. I’ll probably go back at some point and get my doctorate, but for now I just want to get to work, you know? And besides, I already messed around for too long, I have to get serious now.”

Bucky wasn’t sure graduating college with a master’s degree in three years counted as ‘messing around’, but he wasn’t going to argue. “Yeah? So you’re, what, going to start working at SI?”

“Oh, no,” Peter said, looking surprised. “I mean, I considered it, but no. I have my job with the Avengers. I’m supposed to help with R&D for the team, and then I have my own training to do. We’re lucky we went this long without anything else coming up; that’s why I had to graduate so early, so I’d be ready the next time something came up.”

Well first of all, that wasn’t necessarily true. Things had come up; Sam had been double duty as Captain Falcon for the past few years, taking care of international and national threats both. There’d been the thing with Zemo— Bucky still shuddered to think of it— then the conflict with the Russian government, then the jacket bombers, then the Blue Widows, on and on and on. And sure, the entire Avengers team had only been called out to take care of the Sinister Six, but still. The world hadn’t exactly been sitting in silence, waiting for Peter to graduate. 

He thought for a few seconds, then decided he didn’t want to be the one to pop Peter’s bubble. “Yeah, alright. So you’re going to start training again.”

MJ and Peter looked at each other significantly, and without a word MJ got up, walking away. Bucky watched her go, very aware of the fact that it was just him and Peter in this conversation now. 

“I am,” Peter said softy, looking down at his hands. “And uh, that’s actually why I invited you to come today. I mean, also because you’re an Avenger, and uh— really cool— but I mean, there was another reason too. This reason. I just— I know that you trained Mr. Wilson to be Captain Falcon, which is a big task, you know? And I just… I fought him before, you know? In the airport, and that was really easy, no offense or anything. But I’ve seen videos of him fighting now, and I don’t think I could beat him anymore, and I know that’s because of your training.”

He looked up, as if hoping Bucky would get what he was saying. Bucky only got about half of what he was saying, his mind still trying to keep up with all of the misdirections inherent in the boy’s speech, but he thought he had an idea. “Are you saying you want to train to beat Sam in a fight?”

“No!” Peter said quickly, face going red again. Jesus, did this boy have blood in any body part other than his cheeks? “No, not that! I would never— that was a one-time thing, you’ve got to understand. I just know that you trained Mr. Wilson, and now he’s amazing, seriously. And I was just wondering if you’d be willing to train… me.”

Oh, so the kid was high. That was great, just what the party needed. Was their cocaine on the appetizer table? Bucky hadn’t seen it his first three passes, but hey, maybe he just wasn’t paying attention. He should go get some too, then he could have this conversation again in the same state of delusion this kid was in. 

“I’m not going to train you,” Bucky said slowly, so Peter could catch every word. “I’m leaving tomorrow for D.C., Sam has this gig— why would I train you? Why would you  _ want  _ me to train you? Look kid, I’m not— my reputation—”

“I know your reputation,” Peter said quietly, sincerely. “That’s why I want you to train me.”

Bucky was at a loss. “I know your reputation too,” Bucky said, trying to explain it without straight-up insulting the kid. “Look kid, you don’t kill people. My fighting style isn’t what you’re looking for.”

Peter scrunched up his face in distaste. “Yeah, I don’t kill  _ pick-pockets.  _ There’s a difference between using non-lethal force on petty crime, and getting in a fight with someone like Thanos. During the Battle of the Thanos, I promise you, I wasn’t aiming to maim.”

“That was different,” Bucky said, exhausted. 

Peter stuck his chin up. “I don’t care. I’m not afraid of violence, and I’m not afraid of you. I want you to train me.”

Bucky sighed, covering his hand with his mouth. He couldn’t do this, didn’t want to get involved. The kid had a whole storm of drama following him everywhere he went, it was too much. And besides, their fighting styles weren’t conducive. Bucky had certainly never swung on a web. 

“Find someone else,” he said finally. 

“Yeah?” Peter challenged. “Who.”

Bucky looked around the room, but everyone there either wouldn’t have the skills to help, like Ant-Man, or was too busy, like Carol. Bucky sighed. Why was he even considering this? He wasn’t the leader of the Avengers; he was only a part of it as a formality, one of Steve’s dying wishes. And he didn’t even  _ like  _ the kid. 

Finally, Bucky looked up, ready to make a deal. Peter thought he wanted this, but he really, really didn’t. And he’d learn that; oh, would he learn. “If I train you, I’ll be training based on what I know. And I was trained by the U.S. Army, British Special Ops, Russian Red Room, and Hydra. You won’t last a week.”

“Even a week would help,” Peter said, standing to shake Bucky’s hand. “Thank you sir, you won’t regret this.” 

Bucky was pretty sure he already did.

* * *

That night, Sam was pattering around the RV, probably fucking up Bucky’s entire system of organization, while Bucky made a plan for the week. 

“I can’t believe you agreed,” Sam said, somewhere in the kitchen. Bucky didn’t look up. If Sam was organizing his spices into alphabetical order again, he’d probably scream. 

“I know.”

“I can’t believe you have to train Spider-man.”

“I  _ know. _ ”

“You hated training me,” Sam pointed out. He shook something, and yep, that sounded like coriander. Bucky was going to rearrange his face. “You  _ hated  _ it.”

“In my defense, I actually just hated you.” 

Sam shook something else, then asked “Does garlic go bad?”

Bucky set his laptop aside on the bed, unable to ignore it any longer. “Sam, put my spices back, I’m not fucking kidding. And you were horrible to train because you’re human, and I couldn’t fucking remember normal human specs.”

“You’re making it sound like I’m a D&D character,” Sam complained, coming over to the bed. He crawled on beside him, shoving Bucky’s computer to the side. “And besides, now you remember them. It’ll be easier to train Peter now; just don’t cry if he can’t do a pull-up.”

“I will cry,” Bucky swore. “I’ll flood the earth with my tears. And then I’ll shoot myself. He’s just a normal kid, right? Or is he enhanced?”

Sam shrugged, laying back on his elbows. “I don’t know. I heard a rumor that his webs actually shoot out of his wrists, like, out of his skin.”

Bucky shudders. “That’s disgusting and completely untrue.”

“Hey, I heard it through a very reliable source. Wanna bet?”

Bucky sighed. This was really what his life had come to. “Yeah, okay. But I wanna bet that he  _ does  _ make them naturally, you can bet that it’s tech. That’s just too gross to be made up.”

“Deal.”

They shook hands without looking, then Sam pulled Bucky’s laptop over to him. “What are you reading?”

Bucky shrugged. “I was trying to think up things to do to him this week.” 

“‘Top Ten Most Brutal Hazing Methods To Use On New Recruits’,” Sam read. “ _ Wow.” _


	2. The First Training

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for vomiting (not self-induced)

The next morning, Bucky woke Peter up at the crack of dawn. His apartment door had been unlocked— okay, fine, Bucky had picked the locks— and Bucky found him sprawled face down across his bed, dead asleep. 

Bucky took a moment to breathe in the sight. Really, Parker was kind of cute like this, like a puppy that had fallen asleep in a laundry basket. Aww. Bucky forgot how innocent the youth of today was. 

Welp, time to change that. 

Bucky pulled out his phone and opened up the YouTube app. As he did that, he noticed the time. Wow, he knew he was going light on Peter, but 5am? He’d practically slept the day away. 

It looked like they’d have to work doubly hard to get Peter up to schedule, which meant there wasn’t another moment to lose. Bucky turned his phone volume all the way up and pressed _play_ , the sound of a military bugle filling the room obnoxiously. Peter screeched, jerking up and falling on the floor on the opposite side of the bed as Bucky recited the morning report. 

“Get up and at ‘em! It is 0500 on Sunday morning, May 23, 2027. The first day of training for the new recruits, what a blessed day. I hope you all got a good night’s rest, because today we’re starting out with maxes: max push-ups, max burpees, and of course, max pull-ups. But first, a light warm up: a six mile run.”

“It’s _Sunday_ ,” Peter whined from the floor, dragging himself up using the bed as a crutch. “I thought we were going to start tomorrow!”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “Did I _tell_ you we’d start tomorrow?”

“No, but—”

“Then you _assumed._ First rule of boot camp, no assumptions. You have to be ready for anything, and any time. You think an alien is going to be respectful towards your schedule? That they’re going to wait until _Monday_ to attack?”

Peter groaned, thumping his head on the bed. “Please sir, can we just start tomorrow? Yesterday was my grad party, I went out with my friends after to celebrate.” 

Bucky had noticed. Aside from Peter’s general misery, there was a clear green tinge to his skin, an extra darkness under his eyes. That, mixed with the fact that he’d fallen asleep wearing jeans, and that there was a bottle of vodka on his bedside table, clued him in to the fact that Peter was currently hungover. 

Bucky’d expected as much. In fact, he’d been banking on it.

He tapped his chin, as if trying to remember. “Let’s see. Did _I_ ask _you_ to let me train you? Am I doing this for _my_ benefit?”

Peter groaned. “No.”

“No what?”

“No sir,” Peter grumbled, raising his head. It turned out he looked like a puppy even when awake; who’d’ve thought. “I asked you. I’ll… get ready.”

Bucky nodded. At least Parker wasn’t a complete wimp. “Four minutes.”

Peter visibly steeled himself, using the bed to help himself get up. He stumbled a little, as if dizzy— poor boy probably only just got to bed, the alcohol not having enough time to burn off— and then grabbed the vodka off the nightstand, taking a quick swig to take the edge off. “Yessir.” 

* * *

They started their training outside. There was no sign of the sun yet, but the sky wasn’t as dark as it had been when Bucky ventured out from his RV, promising that the sun wasn’t too far behind. 

“Okay,” Bucky said, looking around. The compound was surrounded by land, great for the training of baby agents and Avengers alike. There was a paved road that led towards the city, and a dirt road that led towards some forested farmland. If Peter lasted past today, Bucky’d have him run along that path, but for today Bucky wanted to watch. “We’re going to start with running. You see this field here? Start running, I want to see twelve laps.”

Peter nodded, clearly barely conscious. He got started jogging, and sped up once Bucky goaded him on. As he ran past, Bucky shook his head. His form was horrible, but he seemed to think he could do it. 

He couldn’t. Bucky knew that already; two laps equalled one mile, and not even the most in-shape soldier could run six miles on two hours of sleep and six shots of vodka. Peter would make it once around, maybe twice, and then it’d be too much. Peter would give up, and Bucky would go back to his RV for a few more hours of sleep. 

Peter made it around the first lap alright, but was slowing down by the time he came back around to pass Bucky. “Speed it up!” Bucky goaded. “If you go too slow, that’s another six laps!” 

Peter sped up, but he wasn’t looking great. _He’s almost there,_ Bucky thought smugly. 

Peter didn’t give up on the next lap though, or the next one. He just kept running and running. He slowed down eventually, but it was clear that hangover or not, he was in good shape. Huh. 

Bucky was almost worried he’d make it when, three-quarters through his ninth lap, the boy fell to his knees and vomited. 

Bucky jogged over, breathing out a sigh of relief. This should’ve happened a long time ago, but it was fine, as long as it happened now. “Aw, that’s alright. Let it out.”

Peter vomited again, and Bucky carefully skated away, not wanting to get his shoes dirty. “Gross. I mean, good. See, I mean business when training, if you can’t handle it—”

“I can handle it,” Peter gasped, squeezing his eyes shut. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, leaning back to rest on his heels. “I can handle it. I just— give me a second.”

“I’ll give you twenty. Then you have three more laps to go.”

Peter’s entire body was shaking. Bucky had been there; alcohol and strenuous exercise did not go well together. Peter probably hadn’t eaten or drank anything since he woke up, and he hadn’t showered since his night out. The sun had started to rise, reminded Peter how much he would prefer to be in his bed right now, asleep. All he had to do was give in, and then they’d be done. 

Peter didn’t give in. He used his twenty seconds to collect himself, and then he got up and started jogging again. It wasn’t a run, but it was good enough. He vomited again on his eleventh lap, but recovered quickly and kept running. Finally, he made it, collapsing on the ground by Bucky’s feet. 

“God, that _sucked.”_

“It takes a lot of work to be the best,” Bucky said dismissively, as if he didn’t even notice Peter’s agony. “Alright, thirty second break then get into push up position. I want to see 100 in… I’ll be generous. 100 in 2 minutes. Get ready.”

Peter grumbled some more, but he managed to get into push-up position. He started doing push-ups, a little slower than Bucky’s count, and though his stomach stayed firm his arms trembled madly. Bucky frowned, moving around him to watch. The kid’s eyes fluttered with every push up, his face discolored. He was clearly in no condition to keep training, and yet here he stayed, barely even complaining. 

Bucky kept watching with a sort of grim fascination. Peter kept going, getting to thirty before he dry heaved, legs giving out and knees hitting the hard packed ground loudly. “Sorry,” he said quickly. “Shit, sorry, I— give me a second—”

He made to get back into position, but Bucky gently put a hand in between his shoulder blades and pushed him back down. “Stop. We’re done for the day.”

Peter looked at him, all wide-eyed and panicked, and looked like he was about to apologize and beg to keep going, but Bucky shook his head. “Hey, _no._ We’re done for the day, go get some water and something to eat. Don’t argue.”

That seemed to go against everything Peter wanted to do right then, but finally he nodded, slumping down. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks, sir. I’ll… I’ll do better tomorrow.”

Bucky shook his head, but all he said was “Yeah, whatever. And it’s Bucky.”

“Thank you. Bucky. _Sir.”_

Even after vomiting his guts out the kid was a sassy asshole, go figure. Bucky should have made him do more pushups.

* * *

  
  


**Peter**

Peter fucked up. 

There was no denying it. He’d just assumed they would start training on Monday, or at least they’d _talk_ about it before Bucky showed up in his room, ready to roll. Peter would have been fine if only he’d known, but instead he was stuck looking like an idiot who couldn’t even do _push-ups._ His literal powers included swinging around on webs, and his upper body strength had failed him when it mattered most. 

Peter felt the humiliation like a weighted backpack clinging to him as he walked back, but he managed to push it to the back of his mind. Those were concerns for later; right now, he just needed to survive long enough to get back to his apartment. He made it— barely— and managed to fill up a water bottle and snag a protein bar before he made it back to his room. There, he fueled up, fully planning on passing out, but by then he was aware enough of his current state to be too disgusted to sleep. 

He made himself shower and brush his teeth, then put clean clothes back on. He nearly put more workout clothes on, but he blew his chance for today, so he got into sweats instead— the type of thing he would’ve worn to bed yesterday, if he hadn’t been such a fuck-up and fallen asleep in his jeans. _God._ What a loser. 

He had enough energy by then to stumble to the fridge and load up on food, going for the greasier stuff. He was supposed to eat a lot of calories because of his metabolism, which he tried to pack into as few meals as possible. Once he was done with that, he finally felt like enough of his basic needs were met that he could go back to bed without dying in his sleep. 

He was asleep for a little while, but not nearly long enough when he heard a noise in the apartment. His spider senses didn’t pick anything up, so he didn’t freak, just hoped that it was MJ retrieving the charger cable she’d left last night, and that she’d be in and out without a word. He had no such luck.

“Hey, loser. Are you dead?”

Peter groaned, hiding his head under the comforter. “Go away, ‘m sleeping.”

Pietro Maximoff gasped sharply, as if shocked. “Nurses, I think he’s dying! Quick, let me check his vital signs—”

Peter yelled as Pietro yanked off the covers, his spindly body climbing onto Peter, knees digging into his soft tissue and fingers prodding all over his rib cage. “Nurse, I think we’re losing him! Nurse, nurse!”

Peter tried to bite him when his fingers got too close, but Pietro was too fast, darting his hand down to Peter’s neck. He pressed two frigid fingers against his pulse point, then splayed out his fingers to choke Peter. “Nurse, he’s dying! I’ll have to give him mouth to mouth—”

Peter snarled, kicking out and throwing Pietro across the room. Pietro sped away before he could hit the wall, sprinting to the other side of the bed, out of range. “I’ll give your ass mouth to mouth,” Peter threatened. 

Pietro grinned. “Promise?” He dodged the pillow thrown at him, of course. He landed on the opposite side of the room, fingering one of Peter’s scented candles idly. “You know, I’m surprised you’re still in bed. We got drunk, but we didn’t get _that_ drunk.”

“Mr. Barnes got me up early this morning, made me train,” Peter groaned, some of the misery from earlier coming back. “I humiliated myself.”

“Did you piss yourself?” Pietro asked curiously. 

Peter sat up, rubbing his face. “No, but I did vomit. A… a couple of times.”

Pietro shrugged. “So? Do you know how many times I vomited when I first got my powers?”

“He threw up a lot,” a girl said from the other room. Peter groaned; great, another person to witness his misery.

Wanda came into the room, smiling and looking a lot more sympathetic than Pietro. “Hey Peter. I’m sorry you’re not feeling well.”

Peter leaned forwards, accepting her friendly kiss on the cheek gladly. “Thank you. At least _someone_ cares.”

“I care!” Pietro objected. “I care very much about your fuck ups. They’re my main form of entertainment!” 

“Bastard,” Peter grumbled. 

“I ordered pizza.”

“Marry me?” Peter corrected. 

Pietro huffed exaggeratedly, but he couldn’t hide his smile. “We’ll see, lover boy. Come on, we brought a movie.”

Pietro leaned forward and hauled him out of bed by the collar of his shirt. A couple minutes later, he found himself sprawled on the couch, laying across both of his friend’s laps, with a movie playing on the tv and a bowl of popcorn balanced on his back. It almost— almost— made the day redeemable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented last time, keep it up! A huge part of my creative process is seeing what parts my audience like, and adding more of those :)


	3. The Vaseline

**Bucky**

The next day, Bucky gave Peter a chance. He showed up in his apartment at 6, and found the boy already awake, dressed and drinking from a water bottle. “Hey,” he greeted. 

Peter immediately jumped up. If he wondered how Bucky got inside, he didn’t question it. “Hey! Hi, hi, I’m— awake. And sober!”

“Both good things,” Bucky said, glancing around the apartment. Peter had only moved in a couple days ago, but already his stuff was exploded across it. “You ready to train?” 

“I’m so ready,” the boy swore. Bucky raised an eyebrow at his eagerness, but didn’t question it. It wasn’t surprising to see on Peter, just… surprising to see directed at  _ him.  _ The former Winter Soldier got a lot of varied reactions from people, but  _ excitement  _ wasn’t a frequent one. 

“Great. Put on tennis shoes you can run in, and meet me outside. You have 60 seconds.”

Before Peter could object, Bucky swung back out the window he’d come in from, free-falling the first three stories and then tucking into a ball right before he made impact, coming up on his feet. His hand instinctively jerked toward his hip, where he normally kept a holster, but he made himself stick his hand in his pocket instead. Recovery wasn’t about going back to your old normal, it was about finding a new normal that you could live with. That was what Steve had told him, at least. 

Nine years ago. 

Bucky shook his head, making himself focus on the present moment. His mind had automatically been counting down, and Peter only had 45 more seconds to get his shoes on and his ass down here. That meant he’d either have to run down three flights of stairs, or get really good at parkour really quickly. He didn’t have time to put on his suit, so he couldn’t rely on any of his normal Spider-man tech. 

Bucky had just about decided Peter was taking the stairs, when the window was pushed open further, and a figure blurred out of it. The kid  _ dived  _ out the window, backwards _ ,  _ his face arching up towards the sky as he hit his peak before gravity took over, sending him shooting towards the ground. He turned midair, landing on his feet and going into a complicated looking high-speed cartwheel, landing on his feet and walking off the momentum. “Time?”

“Good enough,” Bucky answered, hoping his shock didn’t show on his face. Peter nodded, completely blank-faced, not even an inch of smugness to be found over his entire expression. 

_ Okay,  _ Bucky thought.  _ Maybe he’s a little bit enhanced. Or, he’s just a gymnast! If I was Stark, looking for some pre-teen to recruit for a fight, I’d probably choose a gymnast.  _

__ Or, you know. Recruit someone who  _ wasn’t _ a preteen. 

Bucky sent Peter running as he considered this. In truth, he didn’t know much about Spider-Man. He understood the publicity stuff— how Tony recruited him, how he’d played dancing monkey during the whole Accords shit, how his identity was revealed after the shit with Mysterio— but he didn’t actually know all that much about the kid under the mask. He didn’t know if he was enhanced, or if it was all the work of his fancy suit. 

Well, he knew one thing for certain: he wasn’t going to let Peter even  _ think  _ about wearing his suit during this next week of training. If Peter failed— and he would fail— he would fail at his own hands. 

Back in Brooklyn, kids at the swimming hole weren’t given life vests; they were launched into the deep end, and if they figured out how to swim along the way, then that was that. 

Peter ran 6 miles in a little under half an hour. It was a good mile time, but nothing Olympic. By the end, Peter was sweating and breathing a little fast, but definitely wasn’t winded. “Push ups next?”

Bucky nodded, and he got to work. Peter did 100 push-ups, going at a decent speed, though not as fast as Bucky could do them. Pull ups were next, and Peter dropped after 45, face red with exertion. 

“One minute rest break,” Bucky decided, and went inside to get a water bottle. Peter looked about ready to collapse by then, so Bucky expected him to be laying on the grass when he got back. Instead, Peter had lifted himself back onto the pull-up bar and was hanging upside by his knees, curly hair heavy and dark with sweat. “Comfy?” Bucky asked dryly. 

“What are we doing next?” Peter asked, swinging to grab onto the pull-up bar easily. He hooked one knee and one elbow over it, then took Bucky’s proffered water bottle and drank it like that. 

Bucky didn’t let himself think about what he said next: “You’re going to climb up that wall.” He gestured to the wall behind them, gray brick with just about zero hand or footholds. He could do it, with the help of his metal-arm’s infinite grip strength, but he didn’t know anyone else who could. “No tech.”

“Sure,” Peter said. He kicked off his shoes, and looked over to Bucky expectantly. “Are you timing me, or…”

“Yes,” Bucky said. If Peter thought the challenge was speed, let him think that. Bucky wasn’t a fan of people knowing when he was underinformed— even though that was basically his constant state of being. “Go.”

Peter took a running start and launched himself at the wall, landing against it with the balls of his feet and his fingers and scampering up it. The motion was distinctly spider like, and he was at the top of the wall in seconds. 

Bucky came closer to the wall, craning his neck to see. “Okay. Now come down.”

Peter immediately reversed, his speed consistent the whole way through. Bucky had him stop when he was a couple feet above the ground, and took his hand off the brick, half expecting him to fall. He didn’t. 

Bucky examined his hand, checking for any sort of hidden tech, maybe a sort of… mesh, imbedded in his skin? While he was at it, he checked for a hole that his webs may come out of. He found neither. 

“I want to see one of your webs,” he said decisively. 

Peter flushed. “I left my web-shooters in my apartment. But I can go get them!”

“Don’t bother. Stark make them?”

Peter gave him a confused look. “No, I did. I mean, he gave me advice for increasing the canister capacity but—”

Bucky was already shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter. Show me what else you can do—  _ no tech.” _

__ The next fifteen minutes was spent watching Peter do complicated gymnastics routine after routine, using the grass training field like a mat. He climbed up the side of the building, then flipped off and landed on his feet, then landed in a roll, a cartwheel, a walkover. He climbed up the building using just his hands. He ran along the edge, keeping his balance perfectly the whole way around, and when he got to the gap between two buildings, he lept it, making it. Then he climbed down the wall a little, and leapt back to the other building, his hands catching onto the smooth surface as if they were actually sticky. He did this a few more times, and it took Bucky a moment to get past his fascination with his technique to realize that Peter’s jaw was clenched tight, his face bright red. 

“Come down,” he ordered, and Peter did after only a moment of hesitation, rolling. “Are you tired? Or…”

He took Peter’s face in his hands, the close physicality between soldiers coming back easily to him. He titled Peter’s face from side to side, trying to figure out what emotion he was seeing. It didn’t seem right, but if he had to guess from the furrow between his eyebrows, the downturn to his lips… the kid was afraid. 

“You’re scared? Of what, heights?” Bucky asked, abhorred. He’d seen the kid work, no  _ way  _ he was scared of heights. He couldn’t do what he did with a fear like that. 

Thankfully, the idea seemed to be ridiculous to the kid too. “No!” Peter insisted, jerking back. “I just— I don’t have my web shooters on. I’m not used to jumping like that without being able to catch myself— it’s stupid, I know—”

“Keep practicing,” Bucky ordered, his own brows furrowing. “Jump back and forth, and sometimes let yourself fall. That fear is a weakness; you can’t always rely on your gear.”

Peter nodded, but he seemed tired. “Yeah, sure. Easy for you to say.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “What was that?”

“Nothing. I’ll just— I’ll start—”

“No,” Bucky said, crossing his arms. “Seriously, what’d you just say to me?”

Peter shrugged one shoulder, looking up at Bucky guiltily. “I mean, what gear do you use? Your arm? It’s not like you can lose that in a battle.”

“Wanna bet?” Bucky challenged. “Some people have EMPs, little devices that turn my arm into dead weight. Other times, I have to use my arm defensively, and it gets crushed, or torn off or blown up. My handlers accounted for it, and I was trained to deal with it.”

‘Trained’. What a joke of a word. 

Peter frowned. “So, what, they’d tie your arm behind you or something?”

Bucky snorted. “Yeah, sure kid. Now stop waiting around, and start climbing.”

Peter got to it, and Bucky tried to watch, doing his best from letting the memories encroach in his vision. When Shuri had poked around in his head, she took away the trigger phrases, the deep-rooted conditioning that took away his self control and made his conscious thought fade to white. She didn’t touch the memories. 

He remembered the training sessions, remembered going into simulated fights with his metal arm locked away in a lab somewhere. Sometimes, when they had an updated one they wanted to install, they put him into a training simulation designed to blow his arm off. The pain was insurmountable; Zola had been too clever, making his metal arm sensitive to sensations.

Out of all the things they did to him, all the things they made him endure— nothing was as bad as when they bombed his arm. 

Above him, the kid was still leaping back and forth, training through his fear. Bucky thought he was making the right call with this, but he couldn’t be sure. He’d already messed up once, making him train through his hangover, and he didn’t want a repeat. There was a difference between hazing someone and brutalizing them, and though Bucky wanted Peter to give up, he didn’t want to resort to cruelty to do it. Peter asked him to be his coach, not his handler. 

Bucky’s eyes followed Peter leaping from one building to the other, then purposefully letting himself mess up, falling down to the grass. He rolled upon landing, and got back up, ready to do it all over again. 

Getting him to give in might be harder than Bucky expected. 

* * *

The next day, after the running and basic workouts, Bucky took Peter to the training room inside. "We're going to spar," he said simply, pulling his hair back into a ponytail. "Ditch your shoes." 

"Yessir," Peter said, ditching his shoes and his shirt with them. It had been badly stained with sweat, but Bucky was still surprised to see him go without it. Peter apparently chose shirts a little big, because once he peeled it off it was clear that his shoulders were broader than he let out, his body tight and toned, abs prominent. 

"I want answers," Bucky said, done making guesses in the dark. "Did you get a serum?" 

Peter bit his lip, hesitating. Bucky passed him a boa staff, and took one for himself. They'd start long range, then work their way up to mid and close range.

"I think it's classified," Peter admitted, swirling the staff around sloppily. 

"So it was a government program?"

Peter made a face at that, then blocked Bucky's hit. "No, it was just— Tony always encouraged me to keep my secrets close to the chest. He never wanted my secret identity to be revealed." 

"Funny, for a guy who couldn't keep his a secret longer than a week." Bucky swept his boa staff under Peter's feet, and the boy jumped over it. 

"Well, yeah," he said. "I think that's the point. Things definitely would've been easier for him if Tony Stark and Iron Man were seen as different people. Whatever, I guess it doesn't matter anymore. I was messing around at Oscorp one day, and one of their experimental spiders bit me. Made me like this." Peter gestured at himself, neither proud nor self-deprecating, then dropped to his knees to dodge a blow, rolling back onto his feet. 

Bucky picked up the intensity then, and the conversation dropped off as they focused on the fight. He was still going easy on the kid, but Peter was trained in this type of weapon, so it was more about learning defensive strategies than anything else. Sometimes, Peter did get bold and try to take a shot, but when he did Bucky smacked the stick down so hard it hit the floor with a  _ CRACK!  _ Another time, he grabbed the staff and twisted down, using his metal arm as a fulcrum. Instead of dropping the staff, Peter clung on, flipping over Bucky's head and landing on his feet. He dropped the staff and dove, taking Bucky's legs out from him, and Bucky rolled backwards and kicked Peter up into the air. Peter instinctively jerked out his hand, as if expecting a web to shoot from it, but of course nothing did and he fell, Bucky rolling out of the way. 

"Okay, mid-range weapons next." 

They practiced fighting without any weapons, staying standing, which turned out to be nearly impossible for Peter. Peter had never gotten any formal martial arts training, so while he had enough flexibility and strength to do some pretty brutal kicks, he was too skittish for it. He was good at being far away and getting close really quickly on those webs of his; staying close, but not too close? He was awful at it. 

In the end, they never got to close range fighting, as Bucky set Peter up with a punching dummy to practice his kicks on. Once Peter'd started, Bucky picked up the pieces of the dropped conversation. 

"Do you think there's anyone else out there like you?" Bucky asked. He didn't see any reason why not; one spider could bite multiple people, and if there were multiple spiders…

"Nah," Peter said, grunting as he made a particularly hard kick. His skin glistened with sweat. "My dad worked on the project and donated his DNA to the cause, so it only works on him or his children. Well, the only kid he had was me. And besides, the spiders were all exterminated in the end anyway." 

"So your dad could have powers?" 

Peter gritted his teeth. "No. He's dead." 

He said that last part brutally, like he was trying to catch Bucky in some social faux-pas. "Good for you. What about the scientist who created the spiders?" 

"Oh, he tried to take over the world," Peter said dryly, kicking the bag again. "But he's dead now."

"I thought you didn't kill bad guys?"

Peter shook his head. "The police did. I captured him, brought him to them to take to prison, and they shot him point blank. No trial, no jury. They said— they said the turnover rate was too high with supervillains. That it was better this way." 

"And you disagree?" 

Peter shook his head, still focused intently on the target. "They weren't wrong. Every supervillain who comes back for round two kills an average of 10 people before they can be brought back to justice. And there's… property damage to think off." 

Bucky crossed his arms. "Yeah, but you don't care about property damage."

"Sure I do." Peter kicked the target so hard the base wobbled. 

Bucky shook his head. "Stop with the bag, come over here. We're going back to midrange training." 

"Fine," Peter said immediately, gearing up to fight, but Bucky shook his head again. He went into the weapons locker and retrieved two batons, tossing one to Peter. On the surface, they looked nearly identical, but Bucky knew better. 

Peter tried to hit him with it, like a kid sword fighting, but Bucky blocked it with prejudice. He pushed back, roughing Peter up and making his eyes widen as he swung and snapped, the only thing keeping Peter in the fight being his enhanced instincts. That didn't save him, though; experience won over instincts every time, and Bucky made hit after hit, not holding back. Peter seemed to be getting desperate, just trying to block, and leaving his legs vulnerable to attack. Bucky took the opening, metal fingers brushing over the button on the side of the baton. He snapped the baton against Peter's outer thigh, and it rippled with electricity. 

Peter screamed. 

Then he pushed back. "Hey! That's cheating!" He slammed his own solid baton against Bucky's left side, and he blocked with his arm. 

"Is it?" Bucky asked, grinning a little. "Then stop letting me hit you."

That was easier said than done. Bucky hit Peter three more times without electricity, before turning the feature back on and snapping it against his back. Peter screamed through his teeth. 

Bucky did it again. He hit him on the side, the leg, the back, the shoulder. Each time, Peter got angry, more vicious, until a change seemed to ripple through him. When Bucky went for another attack, Peter blocked with his own staff and flipped forward with the momentum, over his head, twisting the baton from his grip. He landed with both of the weapons in hand, and went for the strike. 

Bucky kicked him in the chest before he could, and Peter flew back, landing on his back. He didn't get up. 

Bucky frowned. "You okay?" 

The kid's chest was rising and falling visibly, and he turned his head to the side. "Fucking  _ fantastic _ ," he grumbled, and then sat up, face crumpling. 

_ Aw, shit.  _

__ Bucky ran to get a water bottle, bringing it back to the boy and kneeling by his side. "Hey, hey, it's alright. Here, drink this." 

Peter took the bottle, but he was crying too hard to drink. He clearly didn't  _ want _ to be, but he couldn't help it, choking back sobs and letting out tears faster than he could wipe them away. "Shit,  _ shit _ ."

"It's okay," Bucky reassured, squeezing his shoulder tightly. They were close already, but he tried to get closer, as if he could find a way to penetrate into the boy's mind and block out the desperate sadness. "Hey, it's alright. It's just the endorphins talking; you did good, kid. You're tougher than you give yourself credit for."

Peter laughed self-deprecatingly, shaking his head like he wouldn't believe it. "Yeah, right. Did you see that? I  _ failed,  _ I  _ sucked.  _ How am I ever supposed to be an Avenger when I can't even hold my own against one guy in training?" 

"One guy with a metal arm, decades of experience, and a more powerful weapon," Bucky reminded. "You did good, alright? Who's the expert here, me or you?" 

Peter sniffled, wiping his eyes. "You."

"Damn fuckin' right. So if I say you did good…" 

"I should take your word for it?" Peter finished, giving a small, sad smile.

Bucky grinned, then bumped the water bottle in Peter's hand. "Come on, drink up. Practice is done for today. I want you to take a cold shower when you get back, and then put some vaseline on your burns." 

Peter nodded simply, taking the water bottle in his mouth and nursing it. 

Bucky walked him back to the apartment to make sure he got their alright, then waited until Peter was in the bathroom with the shower running to look around. The boy's phone was still plugged in on his nightstand, and Bucky used his metal thumb to unlock it. That was a trick Shuri had designed up, and it had come in ridiculously handy. Bucky copied Peter's phone number down into his own StarkPhone, then left, making sure the door locked behind him. 

**From: Bucky**

**Vaseline, kiddo. I'm NOT joking.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's all take a moment to appreciate the chapter title. Did that lead anyone on? No? Hmm...
> 
> I've decided that the official update schedule for this fic will be every Sunday and Wednesday! So... happy Wednesday! I hope imagining Peter getting beat up while shirtless did good things for you, because it certainly did good things for me. Keep it up with the comments, and have a great day!


	4. The Falcon Action Figures

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience! I skipped posting on Sunday because I needed to consider the direction this fic is going in, and whether I should add back a deleted scene. In the end, I didn’t add back the deleted scene, because I decided you guys care more about the actually interesting parts of the story ;)
> 
> Note: 20 chapters is a rough estimation, so people know what direction I’m heading with this fic. I’ve got no clue how long it'll actually be.
> 
> Enjoy!

**Bucky**

That night, Sam gave Bucky a call, and the next morning he was up bright and early, securing everything in his RV and getting ready to head out. 

He'd texted the kid already, so he would know to keep training without him. Bucky told him he expected him to stick with their current program of running/push-ups/pull-ups, but to also do other workouts to make sure his entire body was engaged. If you can still move afterwards, you're not doing it right. I'll be back Sunday. 

Bucky stared at the text chain for a long moment after that. Yesterday, Peter had responded to his reminder about vaseline with a picture of the burn on his side, coated thickly with the clear goop. The following text had been a reassurance that he was using the ointment, followed by about five exclamation marks and three emojis. 

Bucky's eyes had caught on the picture, though. The wound had had time to settle by then, leaving it much more obvious than it had been in the training room. There was a clear red rectangle where the baton had made impact, the skin raw and sensitive, and bruising all around it. Bucky stared at the photo, and once again wondered if he'd gone too far. Peter didn't seem to think so, but Bucky didn't put much weight into his words. There were some recruits that would do and say anything just to make their commanding officer proud. 

Bucky finished getting his RV back into driving condition, then started down the road. Upstate New York to D.C. was about an eight hour drive, so with him starting now he should be there by two. 

He was gaining speed, just about out of the Compound, when a figure stepped into the middle of the road and waved with her fingers. Bucky considered stopping, but he didn't have the chance: the RV was covered in a red glow, and it came to a stop without any of his help. 

Wanda came around to the side door and let herself in, sliding into the copilot seat. "So, where are we going?" 

Bucky waited until she shut the door and the red glow dispersed to start driving again. "Oh, I actually decided I'm giving up. I'm driving to the Grand Canyon and throwing myself into it." 

Wanda hummed. "Well do me a favor and get out of the camper before throwing yourself out. It's a nice camper, and I've been looking to move out." 

Bucky glanced at her, surprised. To his knowledge, for as long as she'd lived in America she'd only lived with the Avengers. "You serious?"

"Were you serious when you said you would kill yourself?" She mocked. 

Bucky huffed, turning back to the road. "I see why the tabloids hate you so much." 

"Oh yes, please remind me. I have a lighter in my pocket and all of your personal belongings within reach." 

Sometimes Bucky forgot how fun conversations with Wanda could be. She had a dry sense of humor, and the mixture of being an ex-science experiment and a political refugee gave her a fun, relatable edge. Pietro was probably the same way, but if Bucky was honest he didn't see him too often. 

"So, I'm guessing you don't actually want to come to D.C. with me," Bucky stated, aware of her lack of luggage. "Can I drop you off somewhere?" 

"Oh, I'm only along for the ride," she said easily. "I wanted to talk about you and Peter's training sessions. Specifically, the fact that yesterday Peter was black and blue. Do you have anything to say about that?"

"No," Bucky said, as if he hadn't spent the past day questioning if he went too far. "We were sparring." 

"Oh, so you're bruised too?" 

"He's new to sparring," Bucky defended. "Besides, he'll be fine in no time; he’s got a healing factor." That was complete speculation, but Bucky had to assume Peter had some sort of healing factor. If he didn't, literally what was the point of having a serum?

Bucky was focused on the road, so he couldn't see Wanda's expression, but her icy tone betrayed enough. "Bucky, you're my friend. But Peter is more of my friend, and unlike you, the worst thing that's ever happened to Peter is a low grade on a test. In other words, if you hurt tiny, innocent Peter Parker, I will break my oath and use my other set of powers. Understood?" 

"Understood," Bucky said, filing that threat away to examine more closely later. He preferred not thinking about the fact that this 27 year old had mind control powers that would've made Zola come in his pants, thanks. "Wait, did you just give me the shovel talk?" 

* * *

He and Wanda ended up getting breakfast burritos in the city, and Bucky left her there as he headed on South. Maybe, in a different situation that would've made him feel guilty, but it wasn't as if Wanda couldn't handle herself. She'd do some shopping and get a cab back to the compound; God knew she could afford it. 

* * *

  
Bucky met Sam in D.C. at the Pentagon. The meeting was the same this time as it always was: a bunch of straight white men wearing suits, who felt personally attacked by Sam’s success, and tried to screw him over. This time, they spent an hour explaining why Sam should get rid of his wings, because quote-unquote, “Captain America didn’t have wings.” 

“Captain America also didn’t have a sense of respect for the American government,” Bucky’d retorted sharply. “You don’t want Sam to be the same as Steve was, trust me on that.”

It was an exhausting meeting, but eventually they were able to make an agreement. It was annoying, but the PR team wanted Sam to have a good relationship with the Department of Defense, so they had to try. In the end, they compromised, and Sam agreed to stop doing press photos with his wings extended. He would ‘let the American public get acclimated to the new Captain’, as Secretary Esper claimed. 

Bucky didn’t say that Sam had already been Captain for four years, and he definitely didn’t point out how Esper seemed to be talking about something other than Sam’s wings, but he thought both. He managed to be civil, though, and they got out of the meeting without security being called, which was always a win. 

Back at Sam’s house, they had dinner, then Bucky took a shower in his bathroom. His RV technically had a shower, though it was a hassle to use, so he preferred showering other places when he could get away with it. Sam had a nice shower, and Bucky helped himself to Sam’s expensive natural açaí exfoliating scrub and body wash. After that, they watched some tv together, and Sam sniffed him suspiciously. “Is it just me, or do you smell like the palm trees of South America?”

“It’s just you,” Bucky responded easily, popping another piece of popcorn in his mouth. If it was Steve, he would call Bucky’s bluff immediately and turn it into a wrestling match, but Sam just grumbled a little and moved on. 

Beside him, Bucky’s phone lit up. QUACK QUACK! QUACK QUACK!

“Is there a duck in here?!” Sam exclaimed. 

Bucky shook his head, checking the screen. “That’s my new text tone. You like it?”

“I hate it.”

**From: Peter**

**Hey, you asked for picture updates, so…**

  
  


Attached below the text were two separate pictures: one of Peter doing push-ups outside, and one of him in his bathroom, his shirt raised as he took a mirror selfie, showing off the burn on his side. 

As he looked at the pictures, a series of new texts came in:

**Wanda helped me train today.**

**She had some, uh, opinions on my training regimen but I still got everything done, don’t worry.**

**Not that I thought you were worried, or anything.**

**Anyway, the burns are healing pretty nicely. They’ll probably be gone by Saturday?? Idk, I’ve never gotten electrical burns before.  
  
**

“Do you have a secret girlfriend you didn’t tell me about?” Sam asked, craning to see over Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky smacked his face away lightly, but that didn’t stop him from trying to get a look at the screen. “Who else is chain texting you?”

“It’s the kid,” Bucky grumbled, still trying to read. 

**How’s Sam doing? Are you guys having fun?**

**Tell Sam I said hi! Or don’t, if you think that’d be weird.**

**I have a feeling Sam isn’t my biggest fan.**

“I can’t believe you’re still training him,” Sam grumbled, sitting back. “What ever happened to hazing him?”

“I’ve been hazing him,” Bucky objected, “I just can’t go too far. He’s a kid! Aren’t there laws or something to protect him?”

“He’s 21. Those laws are the Geneva Conventions.”

Bucky shrugged. “Whatever, I’ll get him to give in soon enough. Yesterday I beat him with a stun baton.”

“You’re kidding me.”

Bucky turned his phone, showing Sam the first picture. Sam made an upset sound in the back of his throat, and Bucky thought that he was going to reprimand him for going too far, when instead he said “Okay, that’s unfair. What do I have to do to get abs like that?”

“Experimental drugs?” Bucky lifted up his shirt, flexing his own abs, and Sam smacked his hand back down. 

“Dickhead.”

Bucky glanced back at his phone, rereading Peter’s last texts. “Oh, Peter says hi.”

“Tell him I hate him.”

**From: Bucky**

**sam says hi back**

**From: Peter**

**Oh hi!**

**So does that mean Sam doesn’t hate me?**

**From: Bucky**

**I wouldn’t say that**

**From: Peter**

**Oh**

**Tell him Captain Falcon is my favorite superhero**

“Peter says you’re his favorite superhero.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “So what? He knows how to be a kiss-ass. That doesn’t mean I forgive him for humiliating me in front of Steve.”

**From: Bucky**

**No accounting for taste, I see.**

* * *

  
That night, Bucky laid in his bed, staring at the wall and thinking. 

He was in his RV, even though Sam had a guest room. Bucky prefered his own bed, though. One of the driving factors (ha) that had led him to getting the camper was the fact that he felt like he moved around too much to get any real consistency. He'd first bought it after Sam officially took on the mantle of Captain Falcon, when they were traveling a lot, doing publicity stuff and having meetings with different agencies and charity groups. He didn't sleep well in other beds, in places he didn't know and hadn't scoped out enough to trust. 

The RV was perfect. It was home, and it went wherever he went. 

Bucky laid on his side, staring at the familiar tin wall, and thought about what Sam had said. Why was he still training Peter? He wasn't exactly doing everything possible to get him to quit. Why not?

Maybe— just maybe— Bucky didn't hate it. 

He'd expected to hate it. He'd expected to dread every morning, to be constantly annoyed by the kid, to feel like it was an extra chore he had to deal with. But in reality… he liked their little sessions. 

He thought of the day before, his and Peter's sparring session. He couldn't remember the last time he sparred like that, just messing around, talking about life as they tried to get under each other's guard. He remembered getting Peter angry, seeing him lash out. He'd made Peter vulnerable. 

Bucky had forgotten how intimate training could be. He'd forgotten the trust that went into it, into being sweaty and disheveled with another person, into touching someone with the intention of hurting them, but never hurting them badly. And now, training with Peter… he remembered. 

So maybe it wasn't the worst thing in the world. It wasn't even a big deal; they just trained in the morning, and it didn't spill over anywhere else. It wasn't like Bucky had anything better to do. 

So, with that in mind, Bucky pulled out his phone.   
  


**From: Bucky**

**saturday is your rest day**

**then we'll come back sunday and keep going hard**

Only a couple seconds later, Peter replied. 

**From: Peter**

**Yes sir 👍**

* * *

They spent the next two days in D.C., then drove back together. There was supposed to be a Very Important Avengers meeting that weekend— which basically just meant a couple hours of boredom followed by dinner— but it meant that Sam could cut back on his celebrity duties for a few days of chilling in Upstate New York. 

Sam drove for the first leg of the trip, so Bucky lounged on his couch. The couch was technically a set of long, firm cushions set up over his folded up kitchen table. If he had any significant amount of guests, he could remove the cushions and set up the table, with two benches on each side of it, but for the most part, it was just him, so he kept the table folded.

He leaned back, getting comfy, and plugged in one headphone. Now that he’d decided to actually train Peter, he should probably move past basic bodyweight exercises and find out what the kid could actually do. 

So he went to YouTube, searched “spider-man”, and clicked on the first video that came up. 

He jumped from video to video, taking notes on the kid’s technique. He relied heavily on his webs, though since he apparently didn’t carry any other weapons, that made sense. Still, it wasn’t good; Peter had said he didn’t want to kill petty criminals, but he was willing to kill when necessary. Bucky was a foremost authority of how death could be necessary sometimes, and the fact that Peter didn’t even appear to know how to shoot a gun made him antsy. 

He’d been at it for a few minutes, when a new video popped up. It was some sort of fan video, entitled Spider-man X Iron Man: Forbidden Love. 

Sickos, Bucky thought immediately. Tony had died four years ago, when Peter was 17. To theorize over something like that…

And yet…

He thought back to his conversation with Sam earlier that week about how close Tony and Peter had been. He didn’t know if they’d actually ever been together, but it seemed as though there was something, something Bucky didn’t have a name for. 

He clicked play. 

The video was a mixture of pictures, news clips, and interviews thrown together with flashy transitions, showing both footage of the interactions between Tony and Peter as Spider-Man, and between Tony and Peter the intern. Some of the pictures were edited to show hearts around the two of them, or zoomed in a way that made things seem more nefarious than they probably were, but still, some of the looks were undeniable. Picture after picture showed Peter staring up at Tony longingly; the worst was when Tony stared back the same way. 

The video ended with a clip of Tony leading Peter away from a crowd, his hand low on his back. 

Bucky pulled out his earbuds and asked “Sam? Did Stark ever seem creepy to you?”

There was a long pause before Sam asked, “Is this about the kid again?”

“I just want to get a feel of what I’m working with.”

Bucky couldn’t see Sam’s face, but he could guess that he was considering it. “Honestly? No. I mean, I’m not a fan of the guy, but my impression was never that he was a creep. That’s just my impression though, you saw him more times than I did.”

Bucky let out a breath, his memory immediately conjuring up the fight between him, Steve, and Tony. His metal arm ached sympathetically. “Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just ask the kid.”

“Sure, but if I was you I’d ease him into it first. Play twenty questions, ask him what his favorite food is, the name of his first pet, then drop the statutory rape question.”

Bucky tipped back his head, laughing. “Yeah, alright. And you’re telling me people used to pay for your advice?”

“Man, don’t you even start.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! As per usual, comment and let me know what you thought! Additionally, I am very bored during quarantine, so if anyone wants to get into a deep discussion about something other than this story I’m so down, just leave your thoughts down below 👍
> 
> Have a good one!


	5. Swammin'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's ignore that little thing called a posting schedule while I figure out wtf I want to do with this fic k k thanks.

The next few days of training went well. Bucky kept Peter warming up with a run, though he mixed in different conditioning exercises before getting to skills training. Earlier in the week, Bucky had sent Peter a quiz, asking him to rate his ability in certain skills on a scale of 1-5. He didn’t rate anything a 5, which was probably the sign of an insecure test-taker instead of an untalented one. He only rated himself a 1 in a few categories, including one that made Bucky blanch. 

Bucky marched up to him the next morning, almost genuinely angry, and exclaimed “You don’t know how to  _ swim?” _

__ Peter’s cheeks just got redder and redder. 

That day, they cut training short to jog over to the pond by the compound. “Shouldn’t we have brought swimming trunks?” 

Bucky gave Peter a quick up and down, and shook his head. “Why, you scared of getting your shorts a little wet?”

They were both wearing athletic clothing anyway; what was the difference? 

Bucky trained Peter how to swim the Brooklyn way; that was, throwing him in the deep end and watching to see if he came up for air. He did, after a few long seconds, yelling “Dude!”

“You have to learn!” Bucky called back. 

“I’m still wearing my shoes!”

Peter paddled back to shore, mostly managing to keep his head above the water. “Look at you,” Bucky praised, “You’re swimming!”

“I can doggy-paddle, dipshit. I just suck at it.”

Peter took the time to actually divest his shoes and socks then, leaving them along with his shirt in the sun to dry. His shorts were made of a slippery material that would work just as well as normal trunks would, and they hung a little low on his hips, exposing his waistband. For a moment, Bucky wondered if Peter wore boxers or briefs, then decided he didn’t want to know. 

Bucky took off his own shirt and shoes, then walked in, diving under when the water got deep enough. He taught Peter a few different strokes, things that would get him where he needed to be faster, and things that would get him there slower, but preserve his energy in the process. They just started a competition seeing who could tread water the longest when Clint and his family showed up, already decked out in swimming trunks and water wings.

They all said hi, and then Bucky called over “Hey, when we’re done with this would one of you mind being our damsel in distress?”

Clint volunteered Laura, who laughed and splashed him. “Clint would  _ love  _ to.”

Clint grumbled, but swam over, his Mohawk flat against his head from the water. 

With Clint’s help, Bucky taught Peter how to save someone who was drowning. He had a feeling it’d come in handy if Peter was ever working on civilian evac, or if a conflict happened near the water. 

Peter swam backwards, holding Clint by his armpits. His technique wasn’t great, and Clint’s mouth kept dipping under the water, but Bucky didn’t say anything because he enjoyed Clint’s suffering too much. “Have you ever had to use this?” Peter asked innocently. 

Bucky’s arm recalibrated. “A couple times. I saved a few handlers this way, and then Steve.” 

Peter nodded, dropping Clint off on the shore. “Oh yeah, when you saved him on the Potomac.” 

Bucky frowned. “Who told you that?”

Peter looked up, eyes wide and a little desperate. “Uh.”

“I think Nat did,” Clint said, stretching out on shore. Across the pond, Cooper dunked Nate, making him scream, and Clint flicked water at him in annoyance. His aim was, as usual, perfect. “Boys, quiet down.”

Bucky turned to Peter for more explanation. 

“We were having a meeting about the Accords,” Peter explained, looking embarrassed in the way one did when they were sharing something that was supposed to be private. “Everyone was trying to figure out why Steve was so convinced that you were... well, that you were worth saving. We didn’t know,” he said, frowning in genuine worry. 

“It’s fine,” Bucky dismissed.

“So Nat told them about how you saved Steve from drowning in the Potomac,” Clint continued casually. “It was a ploy, obviously. Something to show that you weren’t a lost cause.”

“It made sense though!” Peter interjected. “If you saved his life, it meant that you were still in there. He was right to believe in you.”

Peter’s words were unfiltered, too trusting, too kind. “That was a long time ago,” Bucky said, giving Clint a meaningful look. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

He shrugged and rolled over, dismissing it. Bucky understood why; Clint didn’t want to look back on the past anymore than he did. 

Bucky looked at Peter, tilting his head a little. “Hey kid, how long can you hold your breath?”

  
  
  
  


It had to be hours later. The sun was at its peak in the sky, and they’d climbed out of the water a dozen minutes earlier, laying out to dry under its warm rays. 

“Bucky?” Peter asked, the name cautious and nearly too-personal on his tongue. Bucky turned his head to look at the boy, making an affirmative, questioning noise. Peter settled down a little more, resting his cheek on the backs of his hands. “I just wanted to say thank you for agreeing to do this. It… means a lot.”

Bucky made another affirmative noise, turning to hide his face in his elbow. One of these days, he’d learn to get used to how easily Peter gave out kindness, but that day was not today, not by far.

  
  
  
  


**Peter**

Their training went on for weeks, and then months. The first week, Peter was so sore he could hardly move, his life narrowing down into a repetition of  _ sleep, train, shower, eat, die.  _ Pietro came over to entertain him sometimes, but he had his own training to do, so a lot of days Peter spent alone, watching tv and trying not to move too much. 

Over time, however, the soreness started to fade as his body got more used to the rough treatment. He started doing more things than just training, including spending more time working with R&D, which was a responsibility he’d definitely been neglecting. He got into a routine that worked, and his body was immensely thankful. It was especially thankful when Peter started eating right: Bucky had asked him, off-handedly one day, what his daily meals consisted of, and as soon as he found out he stormed Peter’s apartment, throwing over half of his food in the trash. 

“Hey!” Peter had objected. “I have high caloric needs!”

“Hot pockets will kill you before a villain does!” Bucky’d retorted, throwing the whole family-sized freezer packet in the trash. 

Bucky gave him a meal plan then, rich with chicken and steak, brown rice and vegetables. “You can still eat shit food, your body just can’t run on it,” he’d said. 

It had helped a lot more than Peter was willing to admit, and their training sessions had continued to increase in intensity afterwards. 

Every day, they started with conditioning, and then moved onto new skills. Bucky seemed intent on training Peter in just about every skill out there, both fighting-based and survival-based. Bucky taught Peter how to fire a gun, but he also taught him how to pack a wound, how to search for bugs, how to hack a computer. 

The most intense days were the ones where Bucky taught him how to survive an interrogation. They talked through it first, and then Bucky led Peter to a dark conference room in the compound, and all teasing dropped aside. He seemed to change into a completely different person, expressionless and threatening and brutal. Bucky Barnes wouldn’t hurt him, but this man would break every bone in his body. He would find his friends, his family, and bleed them dry; he would do unspeakable things in the name of his cause, and all Peter could do to stop him was  _ tell the truth.  _

__ Peter lasted seven minutes before breaking down. Bucky flipped the lights back on, and seemed to flip the facade off, going back to his normal self. “Hey kid, hey. Look at me. You did good; you were supposed to break down. We’ll keep working on it.”

Normally, they parted ways after training, but not that day. Instead, Bucky suggested they go to the Compound’s home theater and watch a movie, which they did, Bucky’s arm around his shoulders comfortingly. It made Peter feel coddled, but honestly, he needed a bit of coddling. 

They were half an hour into the movie when Peter turned to Bucky, eyes roaming over his face, trying to figure out what he was looking at. Bucky was calm, relaxed, looking like he did just about any day of the week. Looking so different from the man Peter had just seen in the interrogation room. 

“Was that the Winter Soldier?” He asked quietly. The movie was still playing, and so he wasn’t sure if Bucky could hear, but based on the way Bucky’s eye twitched, he heard. 

“Not completely,” he admitted, voice soft. “It was a mixture of him and… some old handlers. I was just trying to make it authentic, trying to let you know… what you were in for. If you are ever captured.”

The next day, Bucky asked if he went too far. He hadn’t. The session had been hard, but necessary. Peter wanted to be better. 

“Can we do it again today?” He asked, eager to see results, and Bucky shook his head. 

“We’re going to spread out the emotionally exhausting stuff. Let’s say… we’ll save those for Thursdays.”

So Thursdays became the torture days, as Pietro so lovingly called them when he found out. “If you wanted to be verbally abused, you could have just asked,” he teased. “Barnes wasn’t the only one held by Hydra.”

Pietro had that sort of dark glimmer in his eyes, the one that only appeared when he brought up his trauma, and Peter internally winced. He made sure to give Pietro extra cuddles that day. 

Despite the roughness of the training, Peter found that he was able to handle it. The interrogation sessions were short, and Bucky always made sure to stay around for a while after, helping Peter recover. The next day, they’d spar, and Bucky would allow Peter to use his webs, which did a lot to even the scales. As he swung from rafter to rafter, he would feel any remaining tension dissipate, his muscles relaxing and his smile brightening. 

Back at MIT, whenever things got really bad, he’d make time to go out swinging. If he wasn’t Spider-Man, he probably would’ve dropped out by his first semester. 

Over time, he managed to withstand the interrogation longer. Bucky taught him different techniques, showing him both what he could expect from the interrogator, and how to counteract the manipulation. 

One day, after their session was over, Peter asked the question that had been on his mind for a while. “When someone threatens your family or friends or whatever, is it just a bluff? Like, do they actually know who your family and friends are?” 

Bucky had shrugged, eyes locking on the wall across the room. “I guess it depends. Sometimes, it’s just a bluff. Whenever I did that sort of thing, I usually had good resources though, and had access to enough information to make the threat. If the subject didn’t comply, I’d usually just track down one person close to them. You only ever needed one.”

Peter felt the blood in his veins go cold. “What’d you do to them?”

Bucky’s eyes slid over to his, gaze intense. “Give them a pat on the ass and release them. What do you think I did?”

Peter felt his face flush. “Sorry. Stupid question.”

“It’s not a stupid question. It’s just not a question I can answer.”

As Peter got better at resisting interrogation, they stopped spending so much time on it. It may not even be relevant, Bucky’d said, though it never hurt to be prepared. 

And then one day— at Peter’s request— Bucky drowned him. 

They did it in Peter’s bathroom, the tub filled up with slightly chilled water. The lights were left on, and Bucky didn’t do anything to make the situation more believable, no acting, no setting the scene. He simply knelt beside Peter, clasping his elbows behind him with his metal hand, his flesh hand in Peter’s curls as Peter stared down at the water. 

“This is a form of torture especially used in developing countries,” Bucky explained, his grip never faulting, “mostly just because developed countries have better access to technology. They have the firepower to be more… creative.”

Peter inhaled sharply as the hand in his hair tightened, expecting to be dunked, but Bucky was just shifting his grip. 

“This method is also sometimes used on dignitaries. It’s useful because, while uncomfortable, it doesn’t leave any physical marks, and it won’t kill you. Ready?”

Peter blinked a few times, hyper-aware of the water, so close, and Bucky’s hands on him, tight and unrelenting. He nodded, and Bucky dunked him. 

When the session was done, Bucky helped Peter towel off his hair, then met him in the living room, giving him the chance to change into a dry shirt first. Only Peter’s head and shoulders had been submerged, but the brutality of the motions had splattered his entire body with water— and Bucky’s body, too. His shirt was a patchwork of water stains. 

“I could get you a new shirt?” Peter offered awkwardly, coming back into the living room. 

Bucky grinned a little lopsidedly, and shook his head. “I don’t think we’re the same size. Sit.”

Bucky was sitting in the corner made by the couch and the wall, and he gestured for Peter to sit across from him, in the corner created by two walls. Peter did, wrapping the blanket there around his shoulders. They were close enough for their legs to interlace, like the teeth of a zipper. 

Bucky leaned back, stretching and locking his hands behind his head. “So, you were pretty insistent on having me do this. Are you going to explain why, or am I going to have to write it off just as some weird kink?”

Peter snorted, smiling. “Not a kink, I can promise you that. I… don’t know, it’s just always something I’ve thought about. Tony was, uh, held captive for a little while in Afghanistan, and they did that to him. It affected him, and I guess I’ve always been curious.”

Bucky frowned sympathetically. “Was it what you expected?”

“Not at all,” Peter said immediately. “But I guess the situation affects a lot. I knew I was safe; Tony didn’t have any way to know that.” He shrugged, looking down at his hands. “I miss him.”

Everything had happened so quickly. One day, Peter was asking Tony to write him a letter of rec, and the next a giant donut was landing in New York. Then they were in space, and they met the Guardians, and they fought Thanos, and then Thanos was gone and it was just them, and then the fear happened and everyone started disintegrating, and Peter was disintegrating, and he didn’t  _ understand— _

And then he was back again. Tony wasn’t there, but Strange transported them to a big fight, where Tony was already. They hugged, because Peter had been scared to shit, but somehow Tony had seemed even more freaked out than him, his arms closed around him tightly, squeezing him so tightly, like… like…

Peter didn’t know. 

And then Tony died. 

Afterward, everything was explained. Peter found out about the snap, and how for five years, he’d been basically dead. Tony had mourned him, put up a picture of him over his kitchen sink… it was a lot to take in. 

When Peter looked up, he saw that Bucky was giving him a strange, analyzing look. It was silent for a few moments as Bucky collected his thoughts, putting them into words. “You two were close?”

Peter felt himself flush deeper. Yeah, that was one way to put it. “Yeah.”

“Did anything ever… happen?” 

The emphasis on the word, the double meaning, was clear. It wasn’t the first time Peter’d been asked; he was never good at disguising his emotions. “Not really. We never dated, or… I don’t know, hooked up, or anything like that. I had a crush, though. I know it was unhealthy and all, but I had always looked up to him, and then when I started the internship, it felt too good to be true.”

Bucky was looking at him too intently, like he could reach into Peter’s mind and see his thoughts, watch every memory like files on a computer. Peter didn’t like the idea. Nothing had ever actually happened between him and Tony, but there was still shame tied to the relationship. Peter’d been young, childish, willing to do anything to get Tony’s approval. He wasn’t subtle about it. 

“Did he know?”

That was the worst question. Peter fiddled with his hands so he wouldn’t have to look at Bucky, see his earnestness. “Yeah. He knew.”

“You talked?”

Peter snorted. “Nope. Never talked about it, it was just something we knew. It was… inherent in our relationship. Something we both accepted, and neither of us tried to change.”

That was something that Peter thought about a lot, the fact that Tony never tried to do anything to change it. He’d always had Pepper, and Peter was just a kid anyway, so why didn’t Tony just  _ reject him _ ? Why did he let Peter’s crush happen, never pushing him back, never telling him no. He never told him yes either; but he never told him no. And, because of that, Peter had never been able to get over him. Not until he died, and Peter had no other choice. 

“It was hard to deal with when he died,” Peter said, tip-toeing over  _ that  _ particular subject. Bucky’s foot brushed his, and he smiled, appreciating the show of support. “But, it’s not like I’m the only one who lost someone in the Battle of Thanos. I’m sorry about Steve.”

Bucky stiffened, his metal arm clinking and clicking at his side. Peter watched it, wondering if it was a coincidence that it did that everytime Steve was brought up. 

“Steve didn’t die in the Battle of Thanos,” Bucky said dryly. 

“But he quit the Avengers right after, didn’t he?” Peter asked. “And then he died a year later. I don’t know, it always seemed to me that the Battle affected him pretty harshly.”

“Six months,” Bucky corrected. “He died six months later. And, erm, you’re not wrong about the Battle. I think after Thanos, he realized that this life wasn’t what he’d wanted. So he went off to pursue… something else.”

Peter nodded. Bucky’s explanation felt somewhat stilted, but then again, there’d always been a lot of mystery surrounding what happened with Steve. He’d just disappeared off the face of the earth for a few months, and then Peter heard that he died. Everyone who knew seemed sad, but not surprised. 

“He made his choice,” Bucky said, more bitter than Peter had ever heard him. Peter bumped his foot against Bucky’s, and Bucky let his shoulders drop, sighing. “I’m not happy with the decisions he made, but then again, he didn’t make them for me. He had an idea for what he wanted out of life, and I wasn’t a part of that picture.”

Peter nodded, leaning back against the wall. He understood what Bucky was talking about, and knew first hand the bitterness that came from not being someone’s first choice. “Yeah, I’m sorry you had to deal with that. But my Aunt once told me that you can’t feel guilt for the people that aren’t around anymore. She said, ‘the more you focus on the dead, the closer you get to being one of them’. I don’t know, it helped at the time.”

Bucky gave him a knowing look. “You know a lot of people who died?”

“Just my parents, uncle, and Tony.” Peter laughed, not letting himself dwell on the list anymore than he already had. “Pietro says I’m destined to have daddy issues.”

“It’s not destiny so much as inevitable fact at this point,” Bucky teased, and Peter cracked up again, his laugh dark and ugly. It felt good to let out, though, and it made Bucky smile. 

Bucky huffed out a breath, then lifted himself to his feet, offering Peter a hand up. “Okay kid, I think we’ve ignored real life for long enough. You have any other plans for today?”

Peter grinned, taking his hand up. “Yeah, actually. MJ and I are going out for dinner. I’m actually really excited. She said Ned might come too— he’s our other friend from high school, though he went to a local college— but she wasn’t sure.”

Bucky patted him on the back. “That’s good. Make sure you’re around people today, and keep track of your emotional state. If you have any issues later, make sure to text me. I don’t actually want to traumatize you.”

“Sounds good,” Peter said, only half joking. He’d text Bucky if there were any problems, but he really didn’t expect any. He felt fine; he was more distraught from talking about Tony than he was from the drowning simulation. “I’ll see you tomorrow for training?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow, kid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment and let me know what you think!


	6. Birthday Princess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While writing the dancing parts of this scene I was listening to Ashnikko on Spotify, specifically her songs "Thrust" and "Halloweenie". I’d highly recommend listening to them (if you listen to music while reading) during the scenes for better imagery 😍

Yet again, Bucky didn’t know why he’d been invited. 

It was a weird sort of déjà vu. The birthday party wasn’t held in the same room as Peter’s grad party had been, but was still held on site in the game room. All around, 20-somethings ran about, drinking, playing pool, and being way too flirtatious with each other. Bucky wasn’t the only one who was barely of age, but it certainly felt like it. 

On the bright side, at least at this party Bucky could drink. He sat on a couch in a small cluster in the corner of the room, glaring at anyone who came too close. He’d said hi to Wanda earlier, when he gave her her gift, and was now content to get very lightly buzzed in peace. 

For her 28th birthday, he’d gotten her a fancy hair styling kit, a degrading note about how she needed it, and a disassembled baby doll he’d seen when browsing one of the weird teenager stores. He figured her actual friends could get her good gifts, but if she was going to troll him by inviting him to her party, he could troll her with his gift. 

He’d also gotten a present for Pietro, since the party was for the both of them. He had a tendency to forget that they were twins, since they were so far separated in terms of maturity. Maybe it was the male/female difference, but it seemed to Bucky that Pietro seemed at least four years younger than his twin, if not more. 

Bucky surveyed the party, trying to pick out which people he recognized. Wanda and Pietro were easy to spot, as they both had light up headbands that read “Happy Birthday Princess/King!”, except they’d apparently switched, so Wanda was the Birthday King and Pietro was the Birthday Princess. Also in the room was MJ, Peter’s curly-haired friend from school; Gamora and Mantis, two of the Guardians; and Shuri, who made Bucky do a double take when he realized she was dressed like an American in a crop top and flannel. He made a mental note to talk to her at some point that night, but she was currently in the middle of a verbal fight with a guy her age. Bucky would get in the middle of it, but based on the way people were surrounding the two and egging them on, it probably wasn’t very real. 

Peter was at the party too, playing pool with a few people Bucky didn’t recognize. He was wearing a shirt that was collared, silky, and fancier than anything Bucky had ever seen him in. The top few buttons were undone and the short sleeves were rolled up a little, showing off more of his biceps.

_ Good for him,  _ Bucky thought, taking another sip of his drink.  _ He’s worked for them.  _

__ There was a girl standing close to him, their hips brushing every time one of them shifted. She was wearing high waisted jeans with tears all the way down, her hair straight and brown. Peter took her hands and pulled her close to dance, facing each other and waving their hips in time with the music. 

As Peter licked his lips, eyes darting down to her lips, Bucky wondered if he should be watching this. He should probably look away. 

The two of them moved closer, Peter wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her in so she arched her back, about to kiss, but then everyone else around the table made a fuss and they pulled apart, Peter’s cheeks flushed. He laughed it off and took the offered cue, the girl laughing too. They bent down in tandem, sides pressed up together as she helped him line up the shot. 

“Barnes!” A voice bellowed, and Bucky pointedly didn’t flinch. He took another sip of beer, then glanced over at the approaching figure, as if completely uncaring of his presence. Clint marched over, pulling up a stool and collapsing on it, giving Bucky a dirty look. “I can’t believe you went behind my back like that.”

Ah, yes. That. The afternoon before he’d run into an upset Lila. Normally, he would’ve brushed it off, but she was like,  _ 14 _ , he couldn’t be an asshole to  _ her _ . So he’d asked what was wrong, and what he could do to help. 

Well, it turned out that she was having some self-expression issues, and her parents didn’t get what she wanted to do with her style. She was going for a certain look— emo, not goth as he’d expected— but Clint and Laura were trying to make her dress like they wanted. By that point, Bucky’d already heard so much he couldn’t help but get involved, and three hours later Lila had dyed black hair, and a whole bag of new makeup from CVS. 

Really, Clint didn’t have the right to be mad. Bucky had just helped his daughter feel more confident in her own skin. He used his own money, too! He was practically a philanthropist. 

Bucky took a sip of beer, looking at Clint over the rim. He looked pretty irritated, but not like he wanted to start another Civil War right there and then. “Sorry,” Bucky said, shrugging and making his voice extra petulant, “I just helped her express herself how she wanted. I’m not a big fan of people trying to control someone else’s body.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “You’re such a child. We just wanted her to keep her natural hair color; it’s the same color as her mom’s. If your daughter wanted to look completely different from you, how would you react?”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. “How would I react? I’d be fucking grateful, I’m ugly.”

Clint tried not to smile at that, but he didn’t quite succeed. “Yeah, well, don’t do it again. Where’d you get the hair dye anyway? Did you have it just in case you wanted to look  _ more  _ like Edward Scissorhands?”

Bucky raised his metal hand, tapping the fingers together. Edward Scissorhands, not a bad idea. Maybe Shuri could make him something for Halloween..?

“Nah, we had to buy it. Don’t worry, I stole your truck so we wouldn’t have to take my bike.” He preferred not to move his RV once he got it set up, and the motorcycle he kept on the back wasn’t exactly kid-friendly. “See, I’m looking out for you. Do you know how common motorcycle crashes are?”

Clint rubbed his face, squeezing his eyes shut. “You know, every time I start a conversation with you, I regret it. Every time.”

“That really sounds like a you problem.”

“Don’t turn my daughter against me,” Clint requested, then stood, patting Bucky on the shoulder. “Do you think you’re leaving soon? I want to go home, but they need an adult to supervise.”

Bucky glanced around the room, noting that somehow the party had gotten  _ more _ chaotic during his two-minute conversation. Shuri had moved on from having a roast battle to straight up arm wrestling someone, and based on the light-up headband, that was Pietro making out with a guy in the corner. Bucky grimaced. 

“Technically, they’re all adults,” he pointed out. 

“Yeah, technically, but they’re also mostly young Avengers. Their stress-load is intense, so you know that when they get a chance to let loose, they’re not going halfway. So, are you sticking around or what?”

“I can stick around,” Bucky muttered, his eyes catching on Peter dancing with the girl again. 

Clint patted him on the shoulder again. “Good man. I’ll see you.”

Bucky grumbled something not quite kind in response, then stood, setting his beer cup aside. He pushed past a couple of people, making his way to the pool table, where everyone raised their hands and cheered as someone made a winning shot. Bucky didn’t care who; he was more focused on the bottle of pills Peter had just pulled out. 

Peter’s eyes lit up when he saw Bucky, opening his arms like he wanted a hug. “Bucky! Hey, you came!”

Bucky hummed in agreement and grabbed for the pill bottle. Peter tried to rip it away when he realized, but it was too late. Bucky raised the bottle above his head, wrapping his flesh arm around Peter’s waist and holding him against his side so he couldn’t get it; he knew how squirmy Peter could be. 

“Buckyyyy!” Peter complained, forgetting about the pills to try to push Bucky’s arm off of him. “Wait, not Bucky, I love this song! Let me go!”

“Just be patient,” Bucky grumbled, bringing the pill bottle down to his face to read it. It had a long name he didn’t recognize, so he started reading the rest of the information, trying to figure out what it was. Peter gave up trying to escape, and had started trying to dance despite Bucky’s arm, waving his arms around and wiggling against the side of Bucky’s hip. The girl laughed goading Peter on, and Peter tried to twerk against his hip, obnoxious. Peter couldn’t twerk. 

“Could you hold still for one goddamn moment?” Bucky snapped, annoyed. “What the hell is this stuff?”

Peter noticed what was in his hands and tried to grab for it again. “Oh! I forgot, it’s time for another! Buck-a-buck-a-boo, I need another, please please pleeease—”

“It’s a superhero pill,” the girl said, taking pity on him. “It’s for the Enhanced only, no exceptions. Something about their metabolisms making it hard for them to get drunk normally? I don’t know, Cho says they’re okay.”

“Does Cho know they’re taking them with alcohol?” Bucky asked, because he definitely had seen Peter drinking too. Normally, if someone took pills while drinking, it could really fuck them up, putting them in the hospital or worse. 

“She says they’re fine,” the girl said dismissively, laughing as Peter started trying to do the sprinkler dance. “Seriously, look at the bottle, it says it’s fine. Now let him go, you’re ruining the fun.”

Peter seemed to hear that part, at least, because he stopped dancing, going “No, no, Bucky’s fun! Bucky’s so fun, he’s the best—”

He turned around, body suddenly very close to Bucky’s. Bucky found himself freezing, not really able to process the close contact, the line of Peter’s body warm against him. Peter managed to uncurl his fingers around the bottle, uncapping it and taking one out. “Look,” he said, sticking out his tongue and putting the baby blue pill on it. He kept it there as he talked, explaining in a mumble “d’ere’s on-wee a coupl’ pills,” he said, showing Bucky the inside, where sure enough only three pills remained. He finally took his tongue back in his mouth, his throat visibly moving as he swallowed, and he gave Bucky a lopsided grin. “You should have one. Cho’ll be mad, but that’s fine. Come on, you’ll like it.”

Bucky was having a hard time taking everything in. The music was still playing in the background, so loud he could feel it in the floor, in his skull. It wasn’t a bad feeling; Bucky didn’t get why the Young Avengers needed drugs when the music was already so intoxicating. 

Or maybe it was just Peter’s body pressed against his that was intoxicating. 

“I told Clint I’d stay sober,” Bucky said, using his last remaining sliver of coherence. But God, there was something about how everyone was moving, laughing, completely relaxing into the celebration that made being the voice of reason unappealing. 

When he was a kid, Peter’s age, he would’ve lived for this. They didn’t have partied like this back then, but there’d be dancing, drinking, getting closer with someone than respectful in public under the guise of something else. Back before Hydra, a party like this would be the highlight of his month. 

_ You’re not the same man as you were back then,  _ Steve’s voice said in his head.  _ I’d hoped that Shuri would be able to help, but… it was wishful thinking, I guess. I guess some experiences just change a person.  _

__ It was from the last time they talked, when Steve told him the whole truth about why he went back in time to be with Peggy. That conversation had happened three years ago, and still, it hurt worse than anything Hydra’d ever done to Bucky. He would’ve preferred having his arm blown off again. 

“Ow,” Peter complained, and Bucky realized he’d been squeezing him a little tightly. He let go, though he swiped the pill bottle first. 

“Sorry, Pete. Go back to the party; I’m keeping these, though.” 

Peter pouted, saying a quick “Meanie” before surprising Bucky with a kiss on the cheek and wandering away. The girl had apparently gotten bored waiting, and had started up a conversation with MJ, but she let Peter pull her away, dragging her over to where a bunch of people were dancing. 

Bucky lingered around the edges after that, keeping an eye on everyone. Now that he knew to look for the pills, he spotted them in the hands of both of the Birthday kids, though Wanda’s container still seemed mostly full. Pietro was nearly out, something Bucky could’ve deduced just from his actions alone. He didn’t get in the middle of him making out with another boy, though he nearly did when Pietro started to get extra handsy. The boy shut him down before anything happened though, so Bucky didn’t have to interfere. 

Eventually he pulled up a stool next to where Shuri was perched, dealing out a game of poker. He wasn’t sure if anyone was sober enough for that, but they were just betting with chips, and enough people seemed excited by the prospect anyway. 

“I’m surprised you’re here,” Bucky told her, after she’d dealt the first hand. 

She immediately brightened, as if she hadn’t noticed him. “Barnes! Of course I’m here, Wanda and I are buds! All of the female Avengers are basically best friends, we have a book club!” 

Bucky seriously doubted the validity of that statement, but he didn’t fight her on it, he knew better than to try and correct a drunk person; and Shuri held it well, but she was definitely drunk. She didn’t seem to have any pills though, which was good. To Bucky’s knowledge, she was entirely mortal. 

Shuri moved on, eventually, and Wanda came to sit by Bucky’s side, hugging him tightly. “I love your present!” 

He grinned, waiting a little longer than he should have for Wanda to loosen her grip. “I’m glad; it made me think of you.”

Someone turned up the music even more, making it so Wanda had to yell to be heard. “Are you having fun?”

“Sure,” Bucky said, because that was a simpler answer than  _ I’m scared the fate of the world is in the hands of a bunch of junkies.  _ “Is it really smart for you guys to be under the influence?” He wasn’t quite as worried about Pietro or Peter, but Wanda was sort of in a league of her own, powers-wise. 

She smiled, rocking along with the music. “I’m fine, I don’t even take that much, I still know my letters and numbers. I usually don’t blow anything up until I forget English!”

“Oh, that’s reassuring!” Bucky said. “What exactly were these things you blew up, exactly?”

“Oh, look, it’s Peter! I’ll be right back,” Wanda said, nearly tripping as she got up. Before Bucky could react, she grabbed his face and planted a big kiss on his lips before stumbling off. 

He stole her pills before she got too far, pocketing them along with Peter’s. If she was already high enough to do  _ that,  _ she didn’t need any more. 

Finally, the party seemed to mellow out. The human kids who came from apartments and dorms eventually made their way out to the black cars that were waiting for them, where they were hopefully brought back to their apartments without issue. Soon, there were only a few mortals left, who Bucky herded out, leaving only Avengers and Avengers-adjacent. Gamora and Mantis had been there earlier, but he hadn’t seen them in a few hours, leaving only Shuri, the twins, and Peter.

“I’m surprised to see you here,” someone blessedly sober said, making Bucky turn. He grinned when he realized it was Doctor Cho; thank God, someone who had actual answers for him. 

“Call me a masochist,” Bucky said dryly, waggling on of the bottles of pills at her. “Is this your handiwork?”

“It is,” she said, refusing to act ashamed. “They were Hill’s ideas. Certain heroes were drinking an abundance to try and get drunk, to the point where they were actually at threat of hyponatremia— basically, what happens when you drink too much liquids. The pills have worked pretty well so far, though I do have to be careful about restricting dosages.  _ Some people _ weren’t respecting them.”

At that last part, she side-eyed Pietro, who was laying on the floor across the room, mumbling to himself. 

“Seems like it’d be better to cut them off entirely,” Bucky pointed out. 

Cho smiled thinly. “At some point, we have to respect their free will. Let them be young and dumb, have some semblance of normality in their lives. I promise you, these parties only happen a few times a year; any more, and we would have to get involved.”

Bucky sighed, not wanting to argue anymore. “Alright. Let’s get these heroes to bed.”

Shuri was the easiest, a little giggly as she walked, but still  _ able _ to walk. Cho made sure Wanda got to her apartment safely, giving Bucky a sympathetic look as she left him to deal with the two boys. 

Pietro had gotten up, and when Bucky tried to support him under the shoulders, he blurred, running to the other side of the room. 

It was a whole process, but finally he got the two of them to Peter's apartment. He shoved Pietro onto the bed, then carelessly dropped Peter on top of him to pin him down. Something about this was apparently  _ hilarious _ , because they both cracked up laughing. 

"Friday?" Bucky asked, looking to the ceiling. "Make sure they keep their pants on." 

"Yes, Sergeant Barnes," she said immediately. Bucky made a face, but let it go. 

The next day Peter had off, but he'd better be ready for training on Sunday. For making Bucky deal with his drunkenness, Bucky didn't intend to go lightly on him.


End file.
